Seeds consumed by waterfowl in winter: A review of methods and a new web-based photographic atlas for seed identification

Abstract

Diet quantification has long been and still is one of the first steps undertaken when studying the basic ecology of a species. We conducted a literature review of the techniques used to study and analyse diet among waterfowl. Even though the identification of food items is the most challenging task performed when studying granivorous waterfowl diet, there is a general lack of reference collections to support the taxonomic determination of food resources. We present here a collection of indexed digital pictures of seeds from the reference collections of several French programs of research into waterfowl diet. Photographs are ranked by seed size or by taxonomic key to ease seed identification. This collection is freely accessible at the website http://www.cebc.cnrs.fr/atlasofseeds.html, and it can help wildlife researchers studying the diets of granivorous species to determine food items. A complete bibliography is also provided, including recent papers in archeobotany and useful websites. © Dt. Ornithologen-Gesellschaft e.V. 2007.